An Ethical and Political Bestiary in the First Canto of Dante’s Comedy

Recent studies on animal imagery in the Comedy have shown how the poet draws on the reader’s knowledge of the symbolic values ascribed to animals in medieval tradition, and how he uses similar allegorical techniques in new ways. In the past I have mostly examined the spiritual and religious meanings of these images. In this essay, my intention is instead to study animal imagery from a moral perspective, in order to show how this repertory of images nourishes the ethical dimension of the poem. In particular, I will focus on the animals of the first canto: lonza, lion, wolf and